Gu Qingluo was stunned when she heard this. “You…… actually saw a dragon?”

“Yes. At the time, I thought that it was just an illusion, so I didn’t pay attention to it. After arriving at the Hidden Dragon Institute, I learned that there actually was a clan with the bloodline of a dragon: the Gu Clan. The Illustrious Divine Dynasty Gu Clan, the only clan with the bloodline of an Origin Beast,” Su Chen replied as he slightly smiled at Gu Qingluo.

Origin Beast!

The nightmare of all of the Intelligent Races on the continent!

The once flourishing, prosperous Arcana Kingdom controlled roughly two-thirds of the continent’s territory at its peak.

Just as they believed themselves to occupy the peak of the entire world, a single Origin Beast ruined everything. They could not have possibly anticipated the frightening strength an Origin Beast possessed.

The Origin Beast was a dragon.

The Shining Dragon!

From hearsay, the Shining Dragon was thousands of kilometers long and as tall as a steep cliff. Its eyes were like the sun and moon, and its cry was like the peal of thunder; its every footstep caused the earth to tremble, and its every breath changed the wind and clouds. A simple flick of its tail could level thousands of kilometers. Unsurprisingly, the Arcana Race’s armies, composed of millions of soldiers, were wiped out almost in an instant.

This was far beyond the capabilities of human strength. In fact, there was no way to even imagine or describe how powerful this dragon was.

It was under its unstoppable might that the powerful Arcana Kingdom collapsed almost overnight.

However, the Shining Dragon had no way of acclimating to the lack of Origin Energy. It continued to weaken until one day, it finally died.

The day it died, the sun and moon seemed to fade, the earth became desolate, the stars flickered, and thunder pealed across the continent.

Not long afterwards, its corpse became a mountain range thousands of kilometers long, its blood turned into rivers, and its bones turned into veins of ore. In the end, its physical body returned to nature.

It was so powerful that even in death no one could get near it.

But under those circumstances, one person was able to get close to it and obtain a portion of the Shining Dragon’s blood before its flesh and bones transformed.

This person was the founder of the Illustrious Divine Dynasty, Gu Youhuang, who was also the former captain of the Arcana Kingdom’s human slave army.

After obtaining the Shining Dragon’s bloodline, Gu Youhuang instantly brought the human slave army back to the Everlasting City. There, he used the Bloodline Extractor to give himself the bloodline. His strength multiplied overnight, and his lifespan even increased to around three thousand years.

Not long afterwards, as the Arcana Kingdom was slowly being plundered and its heroes dying, his strength began to reach a point that it had never reached before.

The countless races that had endured the Arcana Race’s oppression for so many years allied together to overthrow their rule.

Because of this, the Shining Dragon Bloodline was also the only Origin Beast Bloodline that the human race possessed!

When Su Chen learned of this history and then recalled the scene that he had seen previously, he instantly realized that Gu Qingluo’s bloodline was not merely as simple as the Soaring Serpent bloodline. Deep within her bloodline, there was another more powerful bloodline that lay dormant – for now.

There had only been one dragon that has ever appeared on the Primordial Continent, at least in recorded history. After flipping through a few records and confirming based on some drawings that he had truly seen the Shining Dragon, Su Chen was sure that Gu Qingluo was one of the descendants of the Illustrious Divine Dynasty Gu Clan.

However, he did not understand why the Illustrious Gu Clan was not destroyed and why the Shining Dragon Gu Clan had become the Soaring Serpent Bloodline.

Upon hearing Su Chen finish describing what he had seen, Gu Qingluo was also evidently shocked.

“Shing Dragon…… you actually saw the Shining Dragon from within my bloodline……” She stared at Su Chen in a daze.

Su Chen recognized that her expression was a bit strange. He knit his eyebrows and asked, “What? Is something wrong?”

Gu Qingluo was jolted out of her reverie. She said seriously, “Do not tell anyone about this.”

“From your tone, it seems like this isn’t very good news.”

An indecisive and conflicted expression appeared on Gu Qingluo’s face. “Truth be told, I don’t know if it’s good news or not. To the Gu Clan, this might be good news, but it might not be to some people.”

Su Chen somewhat understood what she was getting at. “You’re worried that other people will discover your identity?”

Gu Qingluo, however, shook her head. “No, it’s no secret that the Longxi Gu Clan is a descendant of the Illustrious Divine Dynasty. Quite the opposite, in fact – almost all of the upper-tier Bloodline Nobility Clans all know this.”

Oh?

Su Chen was surprised by this fact.

He originally thought that perhaps some members of the Gu Clan had escaped after the Illustrious Divine Dynasty had been toppled, resulting in the current Longxi Gu Clan. But from what Gu Qingluo had said, it seemed that nothing of the sort had occurred.

Gu Qingluo said with some sadness and helplessness, “In reality, even though the Illustrious Divine Dynasty was wiped out, the descendants of the Gu Clan were left unharmed.”

“Why is that?”

“Because they need the Gu Clan’s bloodline. They need the bloodline of an Origin Beast!” Gu Qingluo replied. “The human race has never totally escaped from danger, neither in the past nor present. To deal with the Beast Race, the Ferocious Race, and many other non-human races, we were forced to band together and treasure anything with strength. The Illustrious Gu Clan could be wiped out, but the Shining Dragon Bloodline absolutely could not. No one knows when the human race will be in a crisis. To ensure that this peak-level strength does not disappear, they needed to preserve the Gu Clan.”

The Gu Clan owned the only Origin Beast Bloodline in the whole continent.

How powerful was this bloodline? It was obvious just by looking at the strength of a Demonic Emperor Bloodline.

Ignoring certain special circumstances, a Demonic Emperor Bloodline could increase a person’s strength by an entire tier higher than a high-tier Demonic Beast Bloodline.

Origin Beast Bloodlines were two tiers higher than that.

Back then, when Shi Kaihuang had exterminated the Formation-Piercing Rhinoceros with a single finger strike greater in power than most Yang Opening cultivators were able to release, he had said that there were Qi Drawing Realm cultivators who could achieve a similar effect.

This vast difference between two realms referred precisely to the Origin Beast Gu Clan!

Without an Origin Beast Bloodline, the highest realm a human could reach was the Light Shaking Realm.

It was because of the presence of an Origin Beast Bloodline that the human race was able to make further discoveries and advance step by step, eventually resulting in the seven realms an Origin Qi Scholar could achieve!

This was why an Origin Beast Bloodline was so important.

Not only was it the peak strength of the human race, but it also provided a direction for the human race to advance.

Thus, the Gu Clan could be wiped out, but the Origin Beast Bloodline could not!

“So that’s how it is.” Su Chen began to understand what was happening. “But they still don’t trust you, right?”

“Naturally.”

The Origin Beast Bloodline could not be lost, but the Illustrious Gu Clan could not rise to prominence either!

As the clan that possessed the greatest amount of strength, they needed to be closely monitored and controlled.

Because of this, the Gu Clan was split into two groups.

One group was allowed to keep their Origin Beast Bloodline, but the number of people in that group was limited. All offspring were carefully controlled, and all of the clan members were restricted in where they could go. They were also constantly being monitored. Though they possessed incredible power, they were doomed to never be free.

The other group had their bloodline combined with others, polluting their bloodline.

Bloodlines were mixed by the joining of two people with different bloodlines.

It was difficult to say what the result of combining bloodlines would be. Sometimes, the bloodline would be strengthened, but mixed bloodlines were rarely passed on. Sometimes, they would cancel each other out, weakening the bloodline. Other times, one bloodline would suppress another. The awakened bloodline would dominate, while the other would remain concealed.

For most people, even if mixing bloodlines might produce potentially stronger bloodlines, it wasn’t particularly valuable because mixed bloodlines could not be transmitted.

Thus, most of the time, people would selectively repress one of the bloodlines, usually by relying on some kind of medicine. This would result in the repressed bloodline being passed on to any offspring.

The mixed-blood remnants of the Gu Clan were created by relying on such Bloodline Suppression medicines.

Based on the overarching laws governing the Seven Kingdoms, all of the Gu Clan’s descendants needed to take Bloodline Suppression medicines. They were only allowed to have children after suppressing the Shining Dragon Bloodline within their bodies.

This way, they controlled the Shining Dragon Bloodline instead of wiping it out.

If someday the human race were to fall into dire straits, the dormant Shining Dragon Bloodline might be reactivated in the Gu Clan’s descendants. But until that day arrived, it was better to keep that bloodline in hibernation.

The Illustrious Gu Clan actually had quite a few descendants scattered throughout all seven of the Seven Kingdoms, but most of them possessed the Soaring Serpent or a Demonic Flood Dragon Bloodline. The Shining Dragon Bloodline had been securely repressed. Because of this, those people had much more freedom than the core of the Gu Clan did, but their marriages were carefully controlled and they did not have the right to choose their mates.

They could not marry anyone with a bloodline that was too powerful because that would suppress the Shining Dragon Bloodline too much, making it too difficult to awaken.

They were also not allowed to marry anyone with a weak bloodline or without one because the suppression would be weak and the Shining Dragon Bloodline would be too easily awakened.

The human race treated the Gu Clan like a powerful weapon that they could lose control of at any moment. They needed to carefully preserve its strength, but they also needed to ensure that it wouldn’t bite back at them. As such, they kept it under careful control, not allowing it to go out of control.

If Su Chen could see the Shining Dragon in Gu Qingluo’s blood not because he had some kind of genius-level talent, then the only explanation was that Gu Qingluo’s Shining Dragon Bloodline was stronger than most people’s.

In other words, her bloodline was more likely to awaken.

That was not a good thing.

If her bloodline were to awaken now, when the human race wasn’t in particular danger, she would only have two fates.

“Either we are killed, or we are sent to Empty Mountain,” Gu Qingluo said.

“Empty Mountain?” Su Chen was shocked.

“Yes, the Empty Mountain! It is at the heart of the Seven Kingdoms, and it is the only one of the Seven Kingdoms that does not have enmity with any other kingdom. What they need to deal with……”